Roy Hodgson last night laid down the World Cup law to his England squad as he unveiled his Brazil blueprint.

In a clear and unequivocal message aimed at preventing the squabbles that have affected England and other teams in the past, Hodgson insisted:

No cliques

No selfishness

England comes first – and England expects.

As Hodgson and his players went through their first day at the Algarve training camp where the preparations are beginning in earnest, the Three Lions boss was determined to make the rules simple and straightforward.

Hodgson does not believe anything will be gained by criticising what happened under Fabio Capello in South Africa four years ago.

But where Capello locked his players away in what Hodgson described at the time as the “gilded cage” of Rustenburg, an environment which saw the gripes descend and club rivalries bubble damagingly to the surface, Hodgson has opted for the middle of Rio.

It is about making the players feel like they are in a tournament, a team together, rather than being distanced from the event.

And Hodgson, who recalled the chaos of the France mutiny in Kynasa during that tournament, which ended in an official government inquiry into the behaviour of Nicolas Anelka, Patrice Evra and other players, vowed he will ensure his squad remain truly united.

He said: “You don’t know sometimes, when you’re working with a group what you’re doing that’s adhering them to you and what might be pushing them away from you.

“I’ve been lucky with my choice of staff. Ray Lewington and Gary Neville are two very good people to be with me. They have different qualities to me and can identify with the players.

“We’re quite a close group in the sense of most of what’s going on we’re aware of. It’s not a question of ‘us and them’.

“But we are a team together and we know our only chance of success is as a team together.

“That’s something we have pushed for and I’ve been lucky the players have bought into that. A lot of the younger ones have come in with a good attitude and luckily for me they’ve had very good role models to look up to.’’

(Image: Alexander Hassenstein)

Hodgson, though, added: “One thing is for certain: there’s no chance for any team in the World Cup if they’re not in it together. We’ve seen that in the past, examples where teams who were not together, like France in the last one.

“If you want to win any tournament, if you want to win a league for that matter, you’d better make certain that you’re all singing off the same hymn-sheet, that you all have the same aspirations – all prepared to make sacrifices for each other.

“It’s not rocket science, it’s truisms. But it’s as much of a truism as the fact that games hinge on a single moment of hazard, of the ball hitting the post and going in or going out.

“The thing you can control is your team-work, making sure you choose a group of players who are prepared to work as a team, that you deal with any problems that come up.

“When you stand in front of a group of players for the first time and say, ‘Listen, the only way we’re going to win this is by being a team’, you’ll find 20 of them will say ‘yeah, yeah, you’re right’.

“But then, if they don’t start doing it as a team, you’re quite entitled to say ‘you were the first to say you agreed, and now you’re out of the team it’s a big problem’.”